Vizsoly Bible

The Vizsoly Bible, also called Károli Bible was the first Bible printed in the Hungarian language. It was translated in the 16th century by pastor Gáspár Károli and fellow Calvinists and was printed in 1590 by Bálint Mantskovit. A copy is kept on permanent display in the Hungarian village of Vizsoly.

Gáspár Károli, Calvinist pastor in the town of Gönc, began working on the translation in 1586 and finished it three years later. Since it would have been impossible for one person to translate the complete Bible in such a short time, others must have worked on it too; examination of the vocabulary and phrases used suggests that at least four people worked on it but the New Testament was translated by Károli in its entirety.

Printing began on February 28, 1589 by Bálint Mantskovit who moved his press from Galgóc to Vizsoly. He imported type from the Netherlands and paper from Poland. Mantskovit was of Polish origin, and in a note he asks the reader to overlook the errors he possibly left in the text. When printing began, the full translation was not ready yet, so Károli's manuscripts were taken page by page to Mantskovit by students at Gönc, among them Albert Szenczi Molnár.

On March 3, 1589 Archduke Ernest and the royal secretary Faustus Verantius accused Manstkovit of printing calendars and other forbidden books, and asked for the press to be confiscated. On March 26, Sigismund Rákóczi, the future Prince of Transylvania, to whose estate Vizsoly belonged, denied the accusations and asked to be allowed to finish the printing of the Bible. Thanks to Rákóczi and other powerful nobles supporting the cause, the printing was finished on July 20, 1590. Around 700–800 copies of the book were printed during this time.

Károli names his sources in the foreword: the Vulgata, the Septuaginta, translations and commentaries by Franciscus Vatablus, Sebastian Münster, Santes Pagninus and Immanuel Tremellius; he also used the Hebrew and Greek texts. It is not clear to what extent he utilized earlier, incomplete Hungarian translations; he does refer to those of Gáspár Heltai and Péter Melius Juhász, and he used the translation of Psalm 74 by István Székely.

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